


I Have Loved The Stars Too Fondly

by kryptidkat



Series: I Have Loved The Stars Too Fondly [1]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album)
Genre: DTR, Explicit Language, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, Soft Boys, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, aroace Kobra, cherri started running the zones a lot younger than Kobra though so he’s seen some stuff, him and cherri are almost the same age in this ‘verse, not kobracola
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-24 16:40:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20361715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kryptidkat/pseuds/kryptidkat
Summary: Stargazing on the diner roof takes a sudden, intimate turn for Kobra and Cherri, though not the way you’d expect.





	I Have Loved The Stars Too Fondly

**Author's Note:**

> If they were starcrossed, it was in the best kind of way...

When Cherri arrived at the diner, he burst breathlessly inside and ran smack into Jet. 

"Whoa, ease up on the throttle there, Cola. What's going on?" 

“I figured it out!” Cherri panted, brandishing his battered astronomy almanac. “It’s tonight!” 

“What’s tonight?” said Poison, walking in from the back yard with an armload of junk. 

“The meteor shower!” Cherri stepped out of Poison’s way so he could get out the front door. “I’m pretty sure, anyway. I came right here as soon as I finished the calculations. Didn’t want you to miss it. It’s supposed to be a big one.”

Kobra brushed past him too, following Poison with his own armload of junk. His only acknowledgement of Cherri was in giving him a casual nod from behind his sunglasses, like Cherri had never been away, and somehow that made Cherri feel more special than if he had dropped everything to hug him and make a big deal out of it. 

“Meteor shower, dude!” Cherri yelled after him. 

“Rad,” came Kobra’s voice faintly from outside.

“Ever seen one, Girlie?” Cherri looked down at the Girl, who had appeared out of nowhere and wrapped herself around his legs.

“Nope. What is it?” 

Cherri extracted himself from her grip so he could kneel down to show her the almanac. “Stars. Like, extra stars. Bonus stars. Stars 2.0. You’ve seen a shooting star before, yeah? That’s all it is — except it’s a lot of them, all at once. They’re not actually stars at all, though! Did you know that? What it actually is, is that debris from outer space comes hurtling into the atmosphere really fast, right? So fast that the friction catches them on fire and they burn up into nothing before they even hit the ground and that’s the light you see as they’re coming do —”

“Oh, can it, Cola. You’re boring the brat,” Ghoul said from across the room where he was reading a manual. It was upside down. 

“Nice to see you too,” said Cherri. He turned back to the Girl. “That’s the gist of it, anyway.”

Jet shot Cherri a _ Sorry, you know how Ghoul is _look. “When is it supposed to start?”

“It’s just a prediction,” Cherri warned. “I’m still not sure I figured it right. If I did, not long after dark. Perfect timing for you, shortstack.” 

“Yeah, not my bedtime!” said the Girl, holding up her hand for Cherri to high five. He slapped it. 

“Awesome, we can do a watch party,” said Jet. 

“Someone call me?” Poison came back in with Kobra behind him. 

“We’re having a watch party for the meteor shower!” the Girl said. 

“Is that so!” Poison scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder, making her shriek. 

Kobra blanched at Jet. 

“Just us, I meant, Kobra,” Jet clarified quickly. Kobra nodded and relaxed a bit. 

Poison was hauling the Girl toward the kitchen. “I love parties. Supper first, though. Ghoulie! Food?”

“Hell yeah.” Ghoul threw down his manual and followed the two of them. 

Cherri hung back. He never wanted to assume he was welcome. Jet liked him well enough, he was pretty sure. And Poison was never anything less than perfectly civil, but Cherri always got the feeling he was constantly watching him (which, granted, was probably justly deserved from Poison’s point of view). Ghoul just didn’t like Cherri, and hell if Cherri knew why. Maybe Ghoul still held a grudge from the time Cherri had finally beaned him with a shoe for calling him Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper and Tropical Fruit Punch all in the span of one conversation. 

"C’mon, Cola, let’s eat. Su casa and all that.” Jet beckoned for him to join them, and Kobra came up behind Cherri and slung an arm around his neck and said _ hi _ happily in his ear and Cherri said _ hi _back, and that was that. 

The six of them shared a chaotic, happy meal together as they waited for dusk, a scavenging free-for-all among the supplies haphazardly stashed around the industrial kitchen. Cherri passed a bowl of instant ramen between himself and the Girl (somehow the crew had acquired a whole pallet of the stuff and they were pretty sick of it by now, but Cherri found it a welcome change from his usual fare of beans and more beans) and snagged a canned peach out of a tin that went around. Kobra dared him to eat something from a pre-wars MRE that in another lifetime might have been something resembling meatloaf, and Cherri said he would if Kobra would, so they each choked down a piece to the total disgust of the others and by then the sun was down and it was time to head outside. 

The night sky was gloriously cloudless, stars blazing. 

“I don’t see anything,” the Girl said, craning her head up. 

“Be patient, half-pint.” Jet sat down in the sand and patted the spot next to him for her. She plopped into his lap instead. 

Poison dropped a blanket onto her shoulders, and he and Ghoul sat down beside them. 

“There!” Ghoul shouted, apparently forgetting he was supposed to be cool and uninterested in the whole affair. 

Poison squinted. “That’s a moth, dumbass.” 

“Oh. Get fucked, moth.” Ghoul threw a handful of sand in its general direction.

“Language,” Jet muttered, purely out of habit. The Girl’s ears were well past saving by now.

Kobra snorted softly from the doorway. 

Cherri glanced over. Kobra was still wearing his sunglasses. Most of the time he just forgot to take them off after dark. (He would wear them deliberately indoors, though. On anyone else it would’ve been a douchey look, but when Kobra did it he was just being Kobra.)

“Nerd,” Cherri said, and plucked them off his face. “You expect to see any meteors with these on?”

“Give 'em here, soda pop.” Kobra grabbed them back indignantly and stowed them in his jacket pocket. And he didn’t karate chop Cherri in the throat for doing it because it was Cherri, and Cherri didn’t bean _ him _with a shoe because it was Kobra, so they were even. 

The Girl squealed and pointed. “I see one!” 

Cherri whipped around to look. It was already gone. 

“Could be any old meteor. Doesn't make it a shower,” Ghoul grumbled, still sounding pissed, but he must have seen the look of wonder lighting up the Girl’s face and let it drop. 

“Make a wish, baby girl,” said Jet.

“But don’t tell,” Poison said. 

Cherri held his breath. 

There. And there was another one. 

And another. 

A whole cascade of them. Glittering, fountaining down. It was almost like fireworks. 

For a few heartbeats Cherri was afraid he might choke up from the sight, after all those long afternoons painstakingly spent poring over calendars and charts and old astronomy books. 

“I was right,” he said. 

“Of course you were right,” Kobra said, and then his fingers were entwined with Cherri’s, and he was tugging Cherri away, around the corner to where the ladder was, and they clambered onto the top of the diner and skirted the patchwork of solar panels to the bit of roof that had been left empty for this very purpose. 

They watched the silver-streaked sky together in silence for a while, swinging their feet over the edge and listening to the others quietly talking and laughing below. 

“Makes me sad sometimes, you know?” Kobra murmured beside him. “That growing up I had no idea that it was actually like this, out from under all that smog.” He scoffed a little. “And after that, finally seeing it was so new and strange and I was still so fucked up in the head I convinced myself it all had to be some kind of surveillance system hanging from the sky, remember that?”

“Yeah.” Cherri tucked his blue streak behind his ear. He didn’t know why Kobra had caught his attention that night, or why it had suddenly been so important to him to get the astrophobic boy he’d just met to understand the beauty of a world that only appeared once the sun was safely tucked away. But it was a nice memory.

“And now there’s so many fewer nights left to watch ‘em...” Kobra trailed off. 

There was a wistfulness in how he said it that wasn't lost on Cherri. It made his chest hurt. Kobra was far too young to be saying things like that. Killjoy life would do that to you, though, and Cherri guessed Kobra couldn’t help it. 

Still, he hated it when Kobra’s mind strayed so easily to the end of the story, like the middle didn’t matter. 

Before Cherri could say anything Kobra shrugged, dismissing the topic entirely. “Anyway. It’s nice to have all this, to look forward to, you know?” Kobra waved a hand at the starscape around them. 

It was a better reason to stay up than just the nightmares, Cherri supposed he meant. Kobra was a habitual insomniac and daytime cat-napper mostly to avoid them. That was a good thing, though, right? Better to run toward something rather than away. 

He said as much to Kobra, who had the audacity to burst out laughing. 

“What? What did I say?” Cherri tried to sound mad, but Kobra’s high-pitched, awkward giggle was so unexpected and infectious that he started laughing, too. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Kobra wheezed. “It’s just, what motivational cat poster did you steal that from?”

He burst into another helpless giggle, loud enough that beneath them Poison swiveled his head around to glare up suspiciously in their direction. 

“Fine, it was a bit cheesy, shut up, shut _ up, _” Cherri made a dive at him, still trying to stifle his own laughter. “Your brother is going to kill me.” 

Kobra went down without a fight. They hit the roof together, Kobra flat on his back with Cherri on top of him. “Oof. What for?” 

Cherri had a pretty good idea what for, at least in Party's mind, but he wasn’t about to tell Kobra. “Just — just because!” 

Kobra shoved him off, and Cherri landed face-up next to him. 

And there was just sky. 

It filled all but his peripheral vision, with the Milky Way arcing through it so bright and near that he got dizzy for a moment, and he forgot what they’d been scuffling about. 

Without Cherri obscuring his view, the sight calmed Kobra down too. His laugh tapered off to a humming chuckle before subsiding altogether. 

Time stood still, marked only by the occasional spark of burning debris, hundreds of miles up. 

“I’ve been reading about stars again,” Cherri confessed. Maybe Kobra was tired of hearing him ramble on about them. 

But Kobra just said, “Yeah?” and that was all the permission Cherri needed. And he told him about Alpha Centauri, which emitted nearly twice as much light as the sun; and how the big red star right _there _was actually Mars; and what the difference between asterisms and constellations was; and how long, long before the Wars and far away from here, seafarers would navigate by them. 

At one point he paused, because his own words were starting to sound awfully familiar. "I've told you this before.” 

Kobra's hand found his. 

“Tell me again," he said. 

So Cherri did. He told him how long before the Wars, too, astronomers had mapped the entire visible sky and how it turned in all its seasons from the perspective of every continent around the globe, except maybe Australia, because who the hell knew what had happened to Australia; and how although the human eye couldn’t see more than a few thousand unaided from one spot, it had been calculated that for every grain of sand on earth there were nearly ten thousand stars in the universe; and how you couldn’t take anything out of the entire universe and that meant they were all made of stardust and would someday be stars again—their bodies, anyways—_for stars thou art, and unto stars shalt thou return_...

And all the while Kobra listened how only Kobra could. 

“...some of them aren’t even alive anymore, you know?” Cherri went on. “Some of these are long, long gone, and their light only just reached us. Because that keeps going, after a star burns out. And they all burn out, eventually.” 

Kobra thought that over for a minute. 

“Bit morbid, coming from you,” was all he said. 

“No, no! It’s not,” Cherri protested, even though Kobra was just teasing him. “Because – because – ” and that’s when he got too excited to get the words out properly, and sputtered for a couple seconds before being able to get a full sentence out again, “because, Kobra, it means, it means that even after you’re gone, your light keeps travelling on and on and on, for _ years. _ Billions, for them. The stars, I mean. _ Hundreds _ of years, for us. Maybe more, who knows? _ That’s _ what it means. The dying light of even the farthest, smallest star is gonna find its way here someday and become a part of, of _ this_.” 

Cherri stopped. He was saying it all wrong. He hoped Kobra would get it anyway. 

“Like the butterfly effect,” Kobra mused. 

“Yes! Kind of like,” Cherri said. Kobra was skipping tracks a bit, but they could do that with each other now. The butterfly effect had been one of their other long nighttime conversations, and Cherri knew exactly what he meant. 

When had it happened, that they had become so perfectly tuned in to the same channel? Cherri couldn’t remember the first time Kobra had taken off his sunglasses around him, or attacked him onto the couch for a good snuggle, or started infodumping about the most recent Japanese martial arts film he’d seen. Or the first time Cherri had brought up the waveriding or the Soldiers for Peace or any of the other shit that miraculously didn’t make Kobra look at him any differently — or the first time he’d shown him one of the poems he’d written, for that matter, which had been a whole different kind of scary before it turned out to be not scary at all. 

With his free hand Cherri idly thumbed over the rosary tangled up in his dog tags. He wondered briefly if he should start believing in fate or soulmates or any of that. Because the two of them had somehow just slipped into each other’s lives, like they had always been there. Like they were meant to be there. 

And he was about to start talking again, cause he had remembered the best part he’d forgotten to tell Kobra — about how there were new stars being born all the time, too, so they’d never run out, that the heavens would always, always be full of stars until the end of time, even if a billion years from tonight the constellations weren’t ones they’d recognize anymore. 

But he happened to glance over and stopped short.

_ The _Kobra Kid, the untouchable steely persona that could put the fear of God into anyone who threatened the people he loved with a single stare, was nowhere to be seen. Not that it was a persona, even — it was just that The Kobra Kid was only one part of him, one he didn't tap into most of the time. Even the warmer, laid-back, albeit still deadpan Kobra Kid you’d see when he was alone with his crew wasn’t who was next to Cherri now. 

It was just Kobra, profiled against the sky, actually looking at peace for once. One hand tucked under his head and eyes half-lidded, face unguarded in a manner Cherri never saw except when it was just them. 

And because he suddenly couldn’t say anything at all, and Kobra was already so close, it was the easiest thing in the world for Cherri to lean over and kiss him on the cheek. 

Kobra didn't light up with delight. He didn’t scrunch his face up in distaste, either. 

All he did was turn his head to look at Cherri with a slow, gentle smile. "What was that for?"

Holy shit, he was so dorky and so beautiful and Cherri might have been a poet, but he didn’t have words for _that_.

"Just because," Cherri told him. 

Kobra rolled onto his side to study him better. 

Even in the dim light, Cherri could see every eyelash, every freckle, every star reflected in his dark eyes. 

They could have stayed there forever. Cherri was still a little in awe of the fact that they could be less than an inch apart and still gaze so easily into each other's souls – with no compulsion to either close the gap between them, or to glance away embarrassed from the bare intimacy of it. 

Then Kobra's expression changed ever so subtly — everything about Kobra was subtle, unless you got him in a karate match or geeking out about obscure straight-to-VHS sci fi movies or told him something absurd or juvenile enough to hit his funny bone — and after a second Cherri recognized it as the same mild curiosity that crossed his face whenever he was examining the sleeve of an album he hadn't heard before. 

Kobra inhaled hesitantly, like he might say something. 

But as quickly as it appeared, the curious look vanished — like it did whenever he decided that he definitely wouldn’t like the record, no matter what the cover art looked like or the song titles were, simply because of the genre — and Kobra rolled over right into Cherri, sliding an arm around his waist and burying his face comfortably in Cherri’s neck. 

Cherri settled in to enjoy the lightshow overhead for a while, breathing in the familiar dusty, faintly bleachy smell of Kobra’s hair that was tickling his chin. 

The meteors had started up again. 

“You’re not _ looking_,” Cherri said, shrugging his shoulder to jostle Kobra a little. 

Kobra grumbled something unintelligible and didn’t budge. 

Cherri let him be.

They had time. The meteors would keep falling all night. 

“Guess it’s different. For most people,” said Kobra, muffled against Cherri’s collarbone. 

That surprised Cherri a little, hearing him say anything like that out loud. 

"Guess so," he said. 

And he didn’t mean anything in particular by it — it was just one of those things you said, when you wanted someone to know you understood what they were telling you, and you didn’t have anything to add yourself — but Kobra pulled away and propped his head up on his hand to search Cherri’s face again, brow furrowed unhappily. 

“Cherri…” he said, like it had never occurred to him to ask before. “Is that...Are we good?”

The earnestness in his concern was so precious that Cherri had to resist giving him another kiss on the cheek, or maybe on the nose. 

He had no idea what he might have wanted if things had been different. But they weren’t, so he guessed it didn’t matter. 

Whatever this was that they shared, it was weird and amazing and rare, and Cherri didn’t want to take a single second of it for granted. 

“Course we’re good,” he said, and he meant it. 

“Okay,” Kobra said finally, after scrutinizing Cherri for a long moment to make sure he was telling the honest-to-God truth. The corner of his mouth turned up sheepishly, before he went all serious and earnest again. “If there was anyone…”

“I know,” Cherri smiled lazily at him. “I know, Kobrakid.” 

If Kobra _ had _gone for it, it would’ve been the first time. But the thing was, Cherri already knew that it would’ve also been the last. Because he’d been watching Kobra watch him for a long time now and had gotten to know every tell and mouth twitch and eyebrow quirk pretty damn well, and he'd never seen the slightest hint of anything like that on his face. 

No, Kobra only ever looked at Cherri with the same steady, undemanding fondness that he was looking at him with now. 

So it really was just as well. 

Cherri impulsively reached out to tousle Kobra’s hair the way he pretended to hate, and Kobra squirmed away and smacked at his arm. As soon as Cherri quit messing with him, though, Kobra let Cherri pull him back in. 

Kobra’s chest rose and fell with a huff, a little sigh of perfect contentment. 

Later, maybe, it would be the right time for Cherri to reassure him there were thousands of ways to love someone, as many ways as there were stars overhead, and when there were that many it didn't matter if you crossed one off the list. 

But for now it was enough to lie there with Kobra's arm draped across him, and tip his face up to soak in the starlight. 

It was a far cry from riding the waves, stargazing. The total opposite, somehow, although the sun was just as much a star as any of those winking down at them now. 

Infinitely different. And yet elating, in its own way. At least when Kobra was here to keep him company. 

Having never really been in a situation before to recognize such a thing, this felt as close to being home as Cherri had ever felt. It was like when you tuned the radio just right and there was no static anymore, just pure, clear music, and the song it played wasn’t a sugary love ballad some people might expect, but rather one of those _ we're-going-to-live-forever _ anthems, quiet and brave and sure.

And Cherri decided right then, in a sudden rush of emotion he couldn’t have named if he tried, that Kobra _ would _ live forever, because Cherri was a poet, and that was what poets did best. He would grant immortality to the lanky dark-eyed boy next to him with nothing but paper and pen – hell, _ all _of them, the renegade and the arsonist and the desertborn and the small, scrappy girl, too. 

Another meteor plummeted into the atmosphere, and another. They flared and went out. 

Kobra nudged Cherri’s foot with his own. “Make a wish.” 

They would be legends, Cherri decided. Long after the last polaroid and wanted poster faded with age or went up in flames or was scattered to the desert winds. Their faces might be forgotten, but their names would not. Cherri would make sure of that. 

Maybe no one would ever find it. Maybe no one would care to read it if they did. 

He’d write it anyway. Just because. 

“Nah,” Cherri said. “You can have mine.”

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily inspired by Saturn by Sleeping At Last. Such a good song - check it out if you haven't heard it! I doubt you’ll be disappointed. 
> 
> (Psst - stay tuned for part two, To Be Fearful The Night, a flashback to when they met which is gonna be just as cute!)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fondly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26352208) by [kryptidkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kryptidkat/pseuds/kryptidkat)


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